mu f ovd of Wm mn\ of iigUUou^ue^ss : 




PREACHED IN THE 



FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHUR(JH, 



TROY, N. Y., NOV. 24, 1864. 



*> 



REV. MARVIN R. VINCENT, 

PASTOR. 



TROY, N . Y . : 

A. \V. SCKIBNER, PRINTER, CANNON I'LACK. 

1864. 



mt "§m\ ot Wnx mn\ oi §u}\timmm : 



THANKSGIVING SEEMON 



PREACHED IN THE 



FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 



TROY, N. Y., NOV. 24, 18G4. 



REV. MARVIN R. VINCENT, 

PASTOR. 



TROY, N . Y . : 

A. W. SCKIBNEK, PllIMER, CANNON PL\CE. 
1864. 



Troy, Xovembcr 25th, 1864. 
Rev. Marvin R. Vincent, 
Dear Sir : 

The viiidei'sigiied having listened with more than ordinary 
pleasure and satisfaction to your discourse delivered on the occasion of the 
National Thanksgiving on the 24th instant, and feeling desirous that the 
sentiments so ably and cloijuently expressed by you should be more widely 
disseminated, would respectfully and earnestly request a copy of it for 
publication. 

Chas. a. Holmes, John E. Wool, 

S. B. Saxton, .Txo. Edwards, 

Harvkv J. King, Gilks B. Kellogg, 

E. C. Williams, Charles P. Hartt, 

Geo. T. Balch, U. S. A., David Cowee, 
John A. Millard, Martin I. Townsend, 

Jas. H. PIowe, John Sherry, 

S. K. Stow, Wm. S. Seaiile, 

C. S. Hurbell. 



Troy, Novemher 2fith, 1864. 

Maj.-Gen. John E. Wool, Messrs. Edwards, 

Holmes, Kellogg, and others. 
Gentlemen : 

In compliance with your request I herewith transmit to you 
the manuscript of my discourse of the 24th inst. 
Truly yours, 

MARVIN R. VINCENT. 



SEEMO^sT. 



Rev. XIX, 11 : "And I saw Heaven opened, and behold a white horse ; 
and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteous- 
ness he doth judge and make war." 

The year, in its round, has brought us again 
to the traditional season for thanksgiving and 
prayer. In obedience to the call of our chief 
magistrate, we assemble, to make the first act of 
the day not one of festivity but of worship. But, 
however numerous our private grounds of grati- 
tude, we are not to forget that the Thanksgiving- 
day is a national institution, and that the call to 
our present duty issues from the heads of gov- 
ernment. It is but proper, therefore, that, what- 
ever our private devotions may include, our pub- 
lic acts should be, as far as possible, unselfish; 
that each should merge himself in the great body 
politic, and bring to the public festival that offer- 
ing in which we are jointly represented. 

It would be natural to attempt to sum up, at 
this time, all the grounds for public thanksgiving ; 
but such an attempt might well appal a wiser 



G 

tluni myself. So vast is the tield, so thickly 
erowdcd with tht^ <>-ol(leii sheaves of Divine bless- 
ing", that the time would fail to harvest the -whole, 
even if the mind did not become bewildered in 
the task. It is, therefore, better for iis to select 
some one of the numerous lines of thought radia- 
ting from the occasion, and to pursue that, than 
to attempt to glean at random from all quarters 
of the held. And hei*e, again, we are met by a 
custom that has acquired ahuost the sanctity of 
law. This day has been for years past, and espe- 
cially since the breaking out of the present rebell- 
ion, set apart for the discussion of great political 
questions and issues. Yet, for myself, I must 
confess that late events and excitements have 
brought to my mind, if 3^ou will allow the ex- 
pression, a surfeit of politics. I turn wnth relief 
from the contesting claims of candidates and the 
comparison of platforms. I shall not impeach 
m}^ patriotism by this confession. I think that 
most, if not all of you, share the feeling with me. 
And now that the great event, fraught with so 
much apprehension and excitement, has quietly 
passed ; now that the will of the people has been 
expressed, and, as I rejoice to believe, loyally 
acquiesced in by both parties, I have little incli- 
nation to tight the battle over, while I am yet 
far from admittino- that the result has rendered 



farther discussion unnecessary, or that the time 
has even come for the pulpit to be silent. Much 
still remains to be done ; much to be decided ; 
much to be canvassed in the spirit of the highest 
christian statesmanship. 

In reviewing the causes for thanksgiving, as 
they appear amid the ghastly horrors of war, 
one cannot fail to be struck with the peculiar 
relations which the present crisis has developed 
between war and Christianity. Strange as is the 
fact, these two essentially opposite elements have 
been associated with an intimacy which has had 
no parallel in the history of the world, and which 
is adapted to call out the liveliest emotions of 
surprise and gratitude. To show, therefore, that 
these relations do not clash with our highest con- 
ceptions of Christianity ; that, in the order of God's 
providence, the two, while essentially opposed, 
may yet work harmoniously toward a common 
end ; that even out of war may law^fully arise the 
materials for a sincere christian thanksffivino", and 
that He who rides upon the white horse is Lord 
both of war and of righteousness, shall be my 
task to-day. 

The intimacy of these two relations grows, in 
no direct sense, out of the religious character of 
the conflict. The present war, though springing 
directly from a great national sin, was not a cru- 



8 

sade .iffainst that sin. Religion did not enter as 
a direct and avowed element of the conflict. It 
had its share in heightening patriotism, in urging 
to duty, in confirming resolution in individuals ; 
but the nation, as a nation, went into the war as 
a political necessity, in self defence, as a means 
of saving itself from political ruin. Out of a 
war like that to which the preaching of Peter 
summoned the fanatical rabble of Europe, a class 
of sentiments and results arose which, for dis- 
tinction's sake, may be called religious. But the 
fact that distinguishes the present conflict from 
all others in history is, that out of a war under- 
taken solely on political grounds, with a tendency 
on the 23art of a large class to confine its explana- 
tion and settlement entirely to political grounds, 
and to resist all attempts to raise the questions 
of the day into the realm of morals ; out of a 
war which is itself the result of as foul a sin as 
ever blackened history ; out of a war which in- 
volved, as it 23roved, division on the most vital 
questions among those between whom union was 
a necessity of existence ; out of a war which, 
more than any other, has aroused the worst pas- 
sions of men, and signalized itself by the most 
fearful atrocities, — out of all this, God has devel- 
oped a national humiliation, a disposition to press 
the issues of the hour to their moral bearings in 



spite of opposition ; a spirit of prayer aiul thanks- 
giving ; a substitution of principles for men and 
parties ; a series of christian activities, christian 
sympathies, christian charities, and an evangeh- 
cal spirit of rehgious awakening and revival 
which have never, in the world's history, marked 
tlie progress of w^ai'. 

It is an interesting, and perhaps necessary (pies- 
tion just here, whether these results are solely 
the creation of the war as a Divine instrument, 
or whether they may not have developed an 
amount of latent virtue in tlie nation ; whether 
the convulsion has not heaved to the surface a 
substratum of conscience and piety wdiicli has 
hitherto been concealed under the rubl)ish of 
filthy lucre and national corruption ? 

Doubtless both are, to an extent, true. Certain 
results are of the war's creation, certain others 
are of the war's development or modification. 
And, indeed, I am disposed to lay some stress 
upon the latter fact. It is most distinctly pointed 
at in the great fact of to-day, that a wdiole nation 
is before (jrod with a song of praise upon its lips. 
The custom in accordance with which we are 
here this day, is no less a tradition than an act 
called forth by the special issues of the time. It 
carries us back to the fact to which I called your 
attention on the last Thavdvso'ivino- occasion, that 



10 

the earliest civilization of New En"'land, from 
"wliic'li we liave derived this custom, was essen- 
tially religious. New England itself was a 
mighty religions protest. Puritanism was a grand 
reaction ; and, like all reactions from great abuses, 
was violent. As it swung back, it wrenched itself 
away from much tliat was lovely and of good 
report. Under its fierce impulse to denounce 
abuses, it often condemned, without discrimina- 
tion, the thinofs abused. I cannot admire nor 
sympathize with the early New England type of 
piety. Like its own granite hills, it was massive 
and majestic, storm-swept, and scarred by the 
avalanche. It lifted its sharp peaks above all the 
developments of its age ; yet the snow lingered 
there, bidding defiance to the sunbeams. It af- 
forded too little place for that liberal play of 
the softer affections ; for those amenities, those 
tender S3niipathies, those graceful refinements, 
which would have softened its ruo-<)-ed outlines 
without impairing its strength or majesty. And 
yet for Puritanism, as first developed on New 
England soil, with all its errors, with all its re- 
pressive tendencies, with all its austerities, this 
nation may well return thanks to God. In its 
very absurdities there was a rude strength and 
dignity adapted to inspire something besides 
levity. If the channel in which it moved was 



11 

narrow, it was straight and deep ; lying through 
rocks and not round them. And as we have 
come to S33 more and more clearly that tlie re- 
ligious leaven of this land was destined to come 
from New Eno;land, to see liow vast was the 
mass which it was destined to permeate, how 
varied tlie characters and circumstances it was 
ordained to affjct, it lias more and more appeared 
wliat a fund of reserved power it was necessary 
to have hoarded up tliere. If so many impres- 
sions must be taken from the religious develop- 
ment of New Eno-land, it was needful that the 
lines of tlie original picture should be sliarply 
and deeply cut. If the block w^as to be wrought 
by so many different chisels, and into such varied 
shapes, it was needful that it should be hard. 
The very excesses of New England Puritanism, 
its almost morbid conscientiousness, its stringent 
legalism, its insistence on doctrinal consistency, 
its over-strained views of moral obligation, have 
stamped it deep on the New England mind, and 
through that have influenced the entire nation. 
Its very rigidity, though relaxed by more liberal 
views of niaidvind and of the Word of God, 
has proved a partial safeguard, at least in New 
Enodand itself, a^-ainst a violent reaction into 
vice. The reaction has been, to a great ex- 
tent, an intellectual one. The mind of later 



12 

^■eiierations hiia revolted from tlie g-loomier dogmas 
of tlieology, and ft-om over-stringent rules of duty. 
But the old training lias left a mark on the New 
Eng'land conscience which cannot be easily erased. 
Even where men have abandoned its stern tenets 
for the more alluring realm of speculative phi- 
losophy, yet New England skepticism itself as- 
sumes the garb of religion, organizes churches, 
and proclaims the most startling heresies from 
pulpits ; and enough of the old ground-work still 
remains to give to her that general aspect of 
order and thrift, that social stability and decorum 
which characterize no other portion of our land 
so decidedly. Puritanism may have made our 
New England fathers sfern men, but it made 
them upright men. Loyalt}^ to God, and the 
most absolute acknowledgment of his sovereignty, 
formed the very basis of their lives. Even pat- 
riotism would have been second to this sentiment, 
had it been possible for the two to become op- 
posed in their path of duty. It made men of 
iron ; but it was tempered iron that could hew 
for itself a way to Empire. 

" They wore men of iiresent valor, stalwart old Iconoclasts, 
Unconvinced by axe or gibbet, that all viitue was the Past's." 

It made undemonstrative men, but it made 
thouohtful men. Tliouoh the tender, fireside 
emotions which so naturally seek expression, 



13 

flowed tur down in their hearts' secret places, 
yet the glimpse of them which would at times 
reveal itself, showed them flowing deep and 
strong, and pure as crystal; and though, at the 
domestic and social altars, Religion stood in the 
guise of a stern Vestal, pure as the snows of Ka- 
tahdin, and as cold, never were those altars more 
sacredly guarded ; never were their fires fed with 
sweeter incense ; never was the sanctuary such 
a power ; never were there exhibited richer fruits 
of filial reverence, fraternal afl^ection, parental 
devotion, than in those early da^^s. Never, in 
short, has religion so wrought itself into every 
department of life, civil, social and domestic. 

Our present Thanksgiving is only one instance 
of the influence of Xew England religious insti- 
tutions. Others might easily be cited, but it is 
matter of rejoicing that, with all the iniquity 
which has deluged us in the later years of our 
own national history, with all the lust for wealth 
which has hurried the peo^de onward so madly, 
with all the national vanity and inflated self-impor- 
tance which have blinded our eyes to the appre- 
ciation of more substantial elements of worth, 
the impulse both to jn'oclaim and to celebrate a 
national acknowledgment to God still remains. 
Even though the proclamation were but a form, 
and the celebration naught but a merry-making. 



14 

it is for bettor tliat even the tbrin of a good insti- 
tution remain, than tliat form and spirit should 
be alike extinct. For even the form, in its im- 
paired beauty, niay some day chance to call to 
men's remembrance a thought of its pristine 
loveliness, and lead them to seek some spell to 
revivify it. 

But to-day's celebration is something besides 
a mere form. I question whether, for fifty years, 
there lias been a public thanksgiving so nearly 
answering to the original spirit of the institution ; 
marked by such a sincere outpouring of gi-ati- 
tude, and such a strong sense of indebtedness to 
God. This fact is too important to be overlooked 
in the consideration of our subject. For remem- 
ber that it is a thanksgiving not only in the face, 
but in the midst of all the calamities and horrors 
and deprivations of war. Looking at the nation 
from a merely human stand-point, the causes for 
despondency and complaint might seem to over- 
balance those of thanksi^'ivino". The war is at its 
heioht. Our hearts are sick with recitals of 
bloodshed. Our homes have been robbed; our 
firesides desolated ; our communities have sent 
forth many of their bravest and best to return no 
more. Oh I how thickly the graves are crowded 
at Chattanoo"'a and xVtlanta, at Vicksburo-h and 
Fair Oaks, at Antietam and Yorktovvn. From 



15 

the border-lines to the gulf the bones of Northern 
youth lie bleachino- ; aiid desolated hearts, tliat 
know not where their loved dead repose, go gro- 
ping, with tears, in quest of every grave. The 
weeds of Avidowhood have become a familiar 
sight. The curse of Egypt is well-nigli repeated. 
Scarce is there a house vvdiere there is not one 
dead. The rebellion, too, while in many respects 
its progress has been arrested, its strength deple- 
ted, and its area narrowed, has, in some other 
particulars, seemed to gain. It has infused a 
larger share of its infernal venom into the hearts 
of the free North. It has awakened fears of dis- 
cord at home, that, for the time, have outweighed 
the fear of defeat abroad. Tlie emissaries of 
rebellion have haunted our northern border, and 
the chivalry have wrought their favorite deeds of 
murder and pillage in our peaceful Northern vil- 
lages, and have threatened our cities with flames 
and robbery. Our enemy is yet defiant. We 
have begun to feel the war at home. Its stern 
necessities, and still more, the avarice and villainy 
of those who regard it onlv as a means of fillinpf 
their pockets, have put the very necessities of life 
out of the reach of many. And, to one looking 
at these things as many do, w^alking by sight and 
not by faith, thinking peace and prosperity the 
highest of earthly goods, the present scene of 



16 

confusIoD, blood and death presents little occa- 
sion for gratitude. And seeing, as we do, so 
mucli of this purely worldly spirit, hearing men 
daily express their willingness to make any terms 
for peace, and talking of this and that thing 
having caused the catastrophe, as if it had not 
come round in the ordaining of a higher will than 
man's, it is at once surprising and gratifying, on 
sounding the general sentiment of the nation, to 
find it of an order so much higher, and tending 
to an especial degree of humble, heartfelt grati- 
tude to God. 

For this is no sudden, spasmodic development, 
called forth b}^ a government proclamation, or by 
some temporary success of our arms. It is the 
expression of no shallow enthusiasm, momentarily 
gilded with piety. It is the flower of a longer 
growth — a growth in a hard soil, watered with 
tears, and tilled amid the rude shocks of war. 
The sentiment which breathes in our thanksgiv- 
ings to-day, has found vent during the past year 
in frequent humiliation, in abject importunity at 
the throne of grace. 

Earlier in the war we heard much talk of 
frenerals. When McClellan assumed the com- 
mand of the army, you well remember how the 
popular favor bore him on the very crest of its 
wave, and how the popular mind would consent 



17 

to entertain no tliuught but that of certain suc- 
cess, and abandoned itself to a delirium of hero 
worship. Under him organization was to be per- 
fected. Under him the army was to be led to 
certain victory. Every heart accepted his words, 
" we have been beaten and have retreated for the 
last time,'" as an inlallible prophecy. Oh ! pre- 
sumptuous nation thus to worship man and forget 
God ! Oh ! blind eyes ! not to see that the pur- 
pose of God was not vet ripe. Oh ! forgetful 
hearts ! not to remember that the small grinding 
of the mills of God comes out of Sfrindino- slowlv 
And for this, our presumptuous folly and weak- 
ness, God did most fearfully rebuke us. It is not 
for me to say on whose shoulders rests the re- 
sponsibility of that fearful Peninsular campaign, 
with its thousands of dead and fever-stricken 
victims. That is a matter of little moment now. 
But whoever was the agent, defeat and disaster 
were our lot, and God told us awful truths in the 
swamps of the Chickahominy, in the trenches of 
Yorktown, and in the crowded hospitals all over 
the North. God administered to us a fearful 
rebuke for the blasphemous folly of putting our 
trust in the arm of flesh. I think the nation took 
this and later lessons to heart, for I remember 
that when the tried hero who now commands our 
armies assumed his post — the man to whom the 



18 

people's eyes had already begun to turn — his 
brow crowned with the freshest bays of victory, 
with every precedent adapted to inspire con- 
lidence in his skill and success, there was joined 
with the people's commendations of Gen. Grant's 
capacity and energy a deep and often expressed 
conviction that, without the interposition of a 
stronger arm, failure was to be his portion also. 
And you cannot have forgotten how, just ere that 
terrible Wilderness campaign, when every ear 
was on the stretch for tidings of battle, the people 
bowed their knees before God, and we, in those 
sultrv afternoons, o^athered ourselves too-ether and 
poured out strong cries and tears to God for his 
aid in what we felt to be a dire extremity. What 
these prayers may have had to do with the 
achievement of what successes were gained, or in 
our deliverance from worse disaster than befel us, 
is not now the question. That they had their 
influence, and that a favorable one, I doubt no 
more than I doubt my own existence. Be this as 
it may, I thank God for the spirit which prompted 
to prayer. I thank God that the nation, whether 
through its immediate chastisement or through 
the reviving of the dying embers of conscience, 
showed itself so susceptible of discipline ; that it 
was ready practically to repent of its folly, and 
acknowledge that its lielp came from God alone. 



11) 

Nor is the more recent manifestation of the 
same fact to be foro'otten. The recent election 
was one of tlie most pecuHar crises that has ever 
occurred or could possibly occur in our history. 
We had demonstrated, as a government, our power 
of self-defence ; it remained for us to demonstrate 
our power of self-restraint. For you will remem- 
ber that Democracy is now on trial ; the experi- 
ment of self-government is undergoing its crucial 
test. The test is only partial when government 
manifests sufficient energy and compactness to 
repel invasion. The more delicate question is, 
whether it may not fall in pieces by its own 
weight ; and if it show itself unpossessed of that 
restraining power which will keep it from anarchy 
within while engaged in war without, it proves 
itself not yet capable of self-government; unfit 
to be a force among the Empires. And, looking 
at this (piestion antecedently, there was real 
reason to fear the test. It looked very much, at 
one time, as if the South had succeeded in secur- 
ing the only weapon that would ensure her suc- 
cess — division at the North. For the questions 
which arose here, veil them as you might with 
party technicalities, resolved themselves into the 
simple alternative of loyalty to the Government 
of the United States, or compliance with the de- 
mands of the boa'iis o'overnment at Richmond. 



20 

They were thus questions adapted to call out the 
deepest feelings and strongest passions of men. 
The one party, willing to bear the burdens of war, 
and to make the sacrifices it demanded, bent only 
on conquering an honorable peace which should 
involve the entire and unconditional submission 
of the rebels, heard, with unfeigned horror, the 
proposal of another party to compromise when 
victory was within our very grasp. True, self- 
sacrificing patriotism, devotion to principles, stern 
determination to maintain the honor of the nation 
at any hazard, came into contact with devotion to 
party, devotion to men, self-interest, demagogue- 
ism, the spirit of compromise, and the love of 
slavery. I speak not as a partisan. Part}^ lines 
were tlu'own down in this contest ; and while I 
concede to many of the men whose political views 
differ from my own, purity of motive, and sincere 
conviction of duty, the line of division ran where 
I have just placed it. Loyalty or disloyalty w^ts 
the issue. Patriotism on the one hand, and sel- 
fishness on the other, armed the hands of the 
North, and brought every power into the most 
vigorous action. The old, uncompromising New 
England spirit shook itself like a lion roused from 
his lair, and gathered itself for a decisive grapple 
with treason. The virus of the South, the spirit 
of her so called chivalry, wliich will rule or ruin, 



21 

like a demon, had led the rabble captive at its 
will, and prepared them to insist on their demands 
by fair means or foul. Let secession journals and 
secession sympathisers sneer as they will, you 
know and they know that their threats were not 
empty. You know what traitors were plotting- 
under the shadow of English neutrality. Let it 
be disguised as much as may be, the constitution 
and catalogue of the order of American Knights 
are on record to speak for themselves. The thou- 
sands of rifles and pistols secreted in Chicago, rise 
from their hiding-place and gleam a significant 
answer to denial. The tramping of horses through 
the peaceful streets of St. Albans, the crack of 
revolvers, the blood of unoffending citizens, and 
the public boasts of the miscreants, send down 
their challeno-e to contradiction and show what 
was in store for other cities of the North ; while, 
blackest on the whole catalogue, branding the 
perpetrators with everlasting ignominy, stands 
that unparalleled meanness, that ineffable treachery 
which would have fastened a lie on our brave 
soldiers, living and dead, and made them the un- 
conscious instruments of a party triumph. These 
were some of the forces at work in this struggle. 
Thank God, he did not abandon us. Thank God 
that official vigilance became His instrument for 
the exposure and overthrow of these diabolical 



<•)<■) 



plots. But looking- at the state of tilings as it 
was, it bad, I repeat, become a serious question 
bow far tbe North would be able to exhibit the 
power of self-restraint, with the hands of a iierce 
and blood}^ war dragging- at her skirts, and all 
these conflicting elements at their highest rage 
within. But oh ! I, for one, am proud of my 
country. I praise God this day for my northern 
birth ; and I call on you to join your gratitude 
with mine that Ave have lived to see the nation 
walk this fearful path with a quiet dignity, and 
consciousness of power, and a self-containment, 
which speak volumes for the influence of our 
earlier trainhig and of our later discipline. Thank 
God, public virtue was not dead. Thank God 
that it had even grown to proportions that enabled 
it tQ take the barriers of party in the swing of its 
mighty stride, and to give no heed to them in its 
steady march for the right. Men abandoned 
party at this time who had never even split a 
ticket before. More men than ever before went to 
the polls asking themselves and God — " IVhat is 
right r and not — " Who is the party candidate V 
More men interested themselves personally in the 
conflict than ever before. More men asked re- 
specting the principles of candidates, and informed 
themselves accurately as to the issues pending, 
than ever before. And the national dignit}^ and 



23 

power that have asserted themselves at this crisis, 
and carried the nation triumphantly and peace- 
fully through an exciting popular election in the 
midst of a civil war, will make tliemselves felt 
not only here, but far beyond the sea. They have 
been felt here already. They have manifested 
themselves in the subsidence of party bitterness ; 
in the quiet acquiescence of the people's will ; 
and they will be felt in the intriguing Court of 
France, and in tlie secret council chamber of lier 
wily and ambitious head. They will be felt in 
perfidious England, with her ill-disguised hatred 
and her secret aid to rebellion. They will be felt 
and rejoiced in amid the snows of St. Petersburgh, 
and over the vast steppes of slave-redeemed Rus- 
sia. They will be felt as forces in the tremendous 
revolution which is gathering its elements to re- 
model Europe ; and the desj^ot-trodden millions 
whose eyes have watched us through tliis shadow 
of death with straining eagerness, shall read in 
these manifestations new germs of hope for them 
and for the world. 

But how happened it all 1 Oh ! will any chris- 
tian man ask me to believe that this sublime 
result, this ineffable good, was wrought out for 
us through human foresight or through military 
precautions? You may believe it if you can. 
I cannot. I ascribe this result, in great part, to 



24 

prayer. In accounting for it, I find myself look- 
ing, not to the capitol at Washington ; not to the 
head-quarters of Butler in New York ; not to the 
arsenal across the river. I look into the secret 
places where men and women are prostrate before 
God. I see tears fall, and catch the sound of 
deep sighs and strong supplications. I look into 
the social gatherings for prayer in our churches 
throughout the North, and I find the nation a 
burden on all hearts ; and, strange sound in such 
company, with the call to the polls, I hear min- 
gled the call to prayer ; I see altars of suppli- 
cation smoking from east to west, and the incense 
of devotion, like a morning cloud, heralds the 
rising sun of the day of decision. Never did a 
war beget so much prayer. There have been 
bloody wars ere this, and thousands of prayers 
have winged their way heavenw^ard on behalf of 
individual interests. Mothers and fathers have 
plead for their sons, and wives for their husbands, 
and friend for friend, asking for victory for a 
cause, but seeing, while they prayed, only him 
who represented the cause to their loving hearts. 
But while such sujDplications have ascended by 
millions from our stricken households, there has 
mingled with these individual sympathies and 
prayers a less selfish feeling that has risen into 
an amazing prominence. The nation has been a 



25 

burden upon the nation's heart. Patriotism has 
separated itseh', for the time, from the mass of 
individual hopes and sorrows, and has linked its 
arm with Eeligion's. And, out of the chorus of 
prayer, sounding deep and clear above its surging 
melody, like a church bell by the ocean, I hear 
lifting itself up the voice of a true patriotism ; a 
patriotism instinct with the spirit of sacrifice ; a 
patriotism intertwined with tlie deepest instincts 
of the nature ; a love of country that corruption 
cannot sully nor disaster erase : and from such a 
patriotism, crowned with worship, no longer a 
sentiment but a force, constraining the nation to 
bend the neck of its pride, and to confess Christ 
as king, I draw larger hope tlian from the childish 
clamor of victory-bells, and music, and cannon, 
and the gay parade of waving banners. 

It is a singular feature of the working of evil, 
that it continually produces its own alleviations. 
Its contact with good dashes out sparks which are 
the germs of cheering fires and friendly beacons. 
This feature has been exhibited in the present 
war, in its unprecedented development of chris- 
tian activities and S3mipathies. The angel that 
has troubled the waters has imparted to them 
healing virtue. Private ministrations to the vic- 
tims of war are of comparatively recent date. 
War has had to provide for its own victims. 



2fi 

When Florence Nightingale went through the 
Crimean hospitals, her lamp and very shadow 
hailed by the unfortunates that lay there as the 
harbingers of a guardian angel, the eyes of the 
world turned upon her with wonderment,, and 
Europe, Asia, and America rang with her well 
deserved praises. But her fame and her reward 
are no longer unshared. Private ministration to 
the victims of war has become not only a familiar 
fact but an organized system, absorbing its mill- 
ions of dollars, and enlisting its thousands of 
willino' hearts and active hands. Where Scutari 
had one visitant, almost every battle-field, from 
Bull Run to the Shenandoah valley, has had its 
scores of ministrants, male and female. The 
Union army is not a band of mercenaries. It is 
a piece of the nation's life. Its elements are 
taken from beside our own hearthstones. They 
are not the refuse, but a large proportion of the 
youth and vigor, the wealth, intellect, and cul- 
ture of our communities. Art and science have 
their representatives in the raid^s, as well as bone 
and muscle ; and not a camp or a vessel, or a 
battle-field is there but is linked, by many a tie, 
to peaceful homes in New England villages, or 
amid the farm-lands and cities of New York 
and Pennsylvania, or on the broad plains of the 
west. There was reason whv the national heart 



J( 



should beat more tjiiickly, and the iiatioiial arm 
bestir itseh^ more vigorously at the story of our 
soldiers' sufFerings. And so, hand in hand with 
iron-mailed War, mingling its soft accents with 
the roll of the drum and tlie rattle of musketry, 
walked forth the holy Spirit of Charity, with hands 
laden with blessings, and sweet, sad eyes brim- 
ming with tears. Nor, because the national heart 
was thus touched, can it be truly said that these 
ministrations were, after all, seltish. They were 
more than relief sent from the family to its repre- 
sentative in the field. True, there never was a 
war in which home and the battle-field were so 
closely linked ; but in each household, and in 
each community, the sufterings and dangers of 
their own representatives expanded instead of 
narrowing their sympathies ; and the nation, for 
the time, merged itself into one great family, and 
set itself to provide alike for its thousands of 
children in the field. The same hallowed impulse 
that prompted that aged matron to kiss, for his 
mother, the cold brow of the unknown soldier, 
stirred the hearts and hands of thousands of 
mothers, wives and daughters throughout the 
land. Many a soldier on picket, in the bleak 
December midnight, has had occasion to bless the 
unknown hands to whom he was indebted for 
protection against the bitter cold. Many an one 



28 

lias thanked the unknown Sabbath-school child 
whose little fingers placed within his reach some 
of the simple conveniences of home, so sorely 
missed in the camp ; and many a heart, amid the 
white tents and in the barracks and hospitals, will 
warm to-day at the remembrance of those whose 
thoughtful care and liberal hands have provided 
that the Thanksgiving feast at home should not 
be unshared in the field. Yet this has been but 
a part. On the field and in the hospital have 
been the sweetest, noblest manifestations of this 
grand national charity. Delicately reared ladies, 
who were wont to turn pale at a story of blood, 
walk fearlessly amid the sickening horrors of the 
battle-field, and the scarcely less sickening scenes 
of the hospital, binding up ghastly wounds, facing, 
without flinching, scenes that try the coolest sur- 
geon, and offering to strangers the tender minis- 
tries of wives and mothers. Churches have given 
up their ministers ; students have left their books ; 
lawyers and merchants their offices, and joined 
the long march and shared the coarse fare of the 
soldier, and pillowed their unaccustomed heads 
beside him on the ground or on the floor. They 
have defied the pestilence and the bullet. They 
have shrunk from no hardship and from no ex- 
posure. They have yielded up life itself in this 
service. Passing through those rude, temporary 



hospitals, you may see them, now sitting by the 
sufferer, and penning- for him the message of love 
to home which liis wounded hand refuses to indite, 
now putting- the cooling- draught to his fevered 
lips, or reading to him the words of Christ, or 
binding up his wounds, or breathing a prayer into 
his dying ear. At the ambulance train, and on 
the transport with its groaning freight, they are 
to be seen moving to and fro, their hands full of 
supplies, and their lips teeming with the words of 
eternal life. Do you ask an explanation of this 1 
It is religion thus l)rought into strange relation 
and contrast with war. The answer is best given 
in the words of a stranger at Belle Plain, where 
a few of us were at work on one of the trans- 
ports. He stood upon the wharf watching us as 
we went from one to another, moistening the 
stiffened bandages, and bathing the fevered heads, 
until, at length, with his eyes filled with tears, and 
his lips quivering, he exclaimed, " How can you 
do that ? How can you do it I Is it because you 
are christians ?" Yes. Directly or indirectly 
these great organizations are the offspring of 
sentiments peculiarly Christianity's own, and de- 
veloped, in the order of God's providence, by the 
stern necessities of war. And as geologic con- 
vulsions sometimes throw gems to the surface, so 
this fearful earthquake of war has heaved into 



30 

the li^ht those two precious developments of 
christian charity, the Christian and Sanitary Com- 
missions, which shall glow in the newly risen sun 
• of peace among the most radiant of the nation's 
jewels of sacrificing love. 

And, as in all similar cases, the charity has 
reacted upon its agents. While these efforts have 
diffused gladness throughout our armies, placed 
our sons and brothers in more direct communi- 
cation with home, and alleviated the horrors of 
battle, they have played no small part in main- 
taining in the nation at large a tone of cheerfulness. 
Had mothers and sisters been compelled to sit 
with folded hands, and brood over tlie fearful 
possibilities of war, gloom and dismay would 
have settled like a pall over thousands of house- 
holds. The awful suspense would have been too 
torturing- for endurance. But the work of love 
for the absent soldier and for his comrades, all 
invested with a common interest through one, 
has kept many a heart from consuming itself, and 
enabled it to draw^ out of the very source of all 
its terrors, the elements of relief and hopefulness. 

But there is still another aspect of this topic. 
God seems, in the agencies he has called into 
operation throughout the war, to have had an 
eye to the future, no less than to the exigencies 
of the hour. The reflex action of war is often as 



31 

much dreaded as the war itself. War is a school 
of vice. The camp is generally the fountain-head 
of the worst corruptions ; and when a million of 
the nation's youth and manhood go forth to serve 
for several years in that school, many of them 
disposed to the very evils most fostered by army 
life, and all of them susceptible of evil and 
exposed to temptation, it becomes a serious 
question what the result shall be when this mass 
shall have been re-absorbed into our population. 
Whether it shall come back upon us as a rushing 
tide of idleness, villainy and debauchery, or 
whether, by any possibility, these men shall 
return no worse than they went, and perhaps 
better. None can deny the reality and serious- 
ness of this danger. But to it is opposed one of 
the most extraordinary phases of war in any age 
or country. This is nothing less than a genuine, 
searching religious revival in the army. Time 
will not suffer me to go into details. The regular 
army chaplains, and especially the United States 
Christian Commission, have been God's chosen 
agents in this work ; and through their vast 
machinery of publication, chapel-tents, tract dis- 
tribution, preaching the gospel, personal inter- 
course, and loving ministrations to both body and 
soul, a work is being done for Christ's kingdom, 
which bids fair to answer to a very considerable 



32 

extent, the question, what kind of men our soldiers 
shall be returned to us. These agencies are 
growing so numerous, and so thoroughly and 
efficiently organized, that it is becoming difficult 
for the soldier to escape their action. Christian 
influence meets him as he comes fresh from home, 
and for the first time spreads his blanket amid 
the strange scenes of the " soldier's rest ;" speaks 
to his homesick heart of a rest in heaven, warns 
him kindly of temptation, and points him to his 
only safeguard. It meets him in the person of 
the faithful chaplain, in the tent and at the camp- 
fire. It seeks him out as he lies stunned and 
bleeding on the field, and tells him the story of 
the cross, while it pours oil and wine into his 
wounds. It comes to his bedside in the hospital, 
and whispers words of peace, and puts into his 
hand the testament or the tract. Drunkenness, 
gambling, licentiousness have gone down before 
these efforts ; and though much yet remains to 
be done, enough has been done to move the 
hearts of the church to a spontaneous outburst 
of praise. And I ask you to look at the philos- 
ophy of this movement and see, after all, how 
simple it is. The soldier, though exposed to 
temptation, is yet under circumstances peculiarly 
adapted to render him sensitive to religious im- 
pressions. His gayety is often assumed. He is 



away froni lioiiie, and the rememln'aiice ofits jo3's 
and associations softens liis heart. He is exposed 
to deatli hourly ; and few men can be entirely 
careless in its presence. When sick or wonnded 
he craves sympathy. When near the dark valley 
he gropes hn* a rod and staff to comfort him. 
Now see how God has nsed this fact to make the 
war, in one sense, a great evangelical movement. 
Not only has he placed under such influences a 
large class rendered more than usually suscepti- 
ble by the training and associations of home, but 
he has thrown within the sphere of the same 
agencies a very large class that, in all human 
probability, would have been reached by them 
in no other way. I mean a class gathered from 
the purlieus of our large cities; a class of pro- 
fessional ruffians, not unfamiliar with the interior 
of our jails, and whom no missionary efforts, 
within my knowledge, have ever succeeded in 
reaching. A host of such as these have thus been 
massed, as it were, under the fire of the gospel, 
amid influences peculiarly adapted to open their 
hearts to its power. Thus God, in revealing him- 
self as the Lord of War, lias also stood revealed 
as the Lord of Righteousness. Through all has 
been manifest His inflexible will that even war 
should forward the work of the Prince of Peace ; 
that out of its very privations and its constant 



34 

companionship with death should be evolved 
forces that should mould the rough soldier's 
heart anew, and send him back to his home a 
missionary of love and purity. The tide of war, 
as it rolls back, is not destined to deluge our 
cities and villages with vice and blasphemy. 
God has known the bane, and has furnished the 
antidote. And not only will the christian in- 
fluences thus exerted balance the corruptions of 
war, but I venture to predict that they will turn 
the scale in their own favor ; and history shall 
yet record, as the results of this conflict, the three 
great facts of an enslaved race set free, a people 
chastened into a higher national life, and an army 
in the field baptized with the power of the Spirit 
of God. 

This Divine foresight does not cease here. 
There is another prominent exhibition of it in 
the elements of this conflict. This war is Avaged 
by a self-governing people. It must find its first 
impulse and its main-spring among the people. 
It is not for a king or an oligarchy to declare for 
war, and then call upon us to furnish its sinews. 
The people must be at once the moving and di- 
recting will, and the smiting arm. And the war's 
cessation will, therefore, send back into the great 
body politic a knowledge of war's horrors which 
must, in future, greatly predispose this nation to 



35 

peace. The scars will Ije upon the g^overning 
power itself; and however great our future pros- 
perity, however strong our temptations to ag- 
gression, however adequate our ability to press 
any claim which interest or caprice may prompt 
us to prefer, we shall be likely, with the bitter 
experience of these years of strife, to pause long 
and to ponder well ere we commit ourselves again 
to the tempestuous sea of battle. The war will 
have cost us too much, — too many tears, too much 
priceless blood, too manv broken hearts. Its 
lesson will have been branded too deep into our 
national life and prosperity to make us anxious 
to renew these scenes. And, as the kingdom of 
Christ is to be a kingdom of peace, as we measure 
its progress among nations, by this sign, among 
many others, that diplomacy takes the place of 
war, may it not be that, in this case, " the moun- 
tains shall bring peace ;" that in this turmoil 
God is laying the foundations of a great calm ; 
that even this war is the voice of one crying in 
the wilderness, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord?" 
Who shall say that our country, if she emerge 
from this trial as now she bids fair to do, purified 
and fitted to become an arbiter among tlie nations, 
shall not, by her baptism of blood, be prepared 
to throw her vast weight in favor of peace 1 Who 
shall say that she shall not only secure lasting 



36 

];t3ace to lierself, but be, under God, the instru- 
ment of a raillenial reign to all the nations t Oh! 
it is a grand hope that the world shall yet behold 
her in all her gigantic proportions, radiant as the 
niornino-, though "scarred with tokens of old 
wars," with eyes benign, yet full of a light more 
terrible than the li^-ht of battle to her foes, throw- 
ingher sheathed sword into the scale and keeping 
it down, and with her voice of thunder crying 
Peace ! Peace ! to the fractious despots who, care- 
less of blood, rave and chmior for war. 

And America must henceforth occupy the posi- 
tion of an educator as well as of a peace-maker. 
This war is our punishment for many sins and 
wrongs, but, above all others, for the fearful wrong 
of slaver}^ Yet men have been slow to learn 
this, and in the midst of their sorest chastisement 
have been crying — "keep the negro out of the 
question ;" " fight for the Constitution and the 
Union !" Ah ! vou cannot keep the negro out of 
the question. The Constitution was not broad 
enough to protect him at the first, and you cannot 
cover him with it now. He is woven into the 
question ; and from the first he has resisted the 
attempt to cast him out of it. They tried to 
put him out of the question, and he came into 
the Union lines to start perplexing questions of 
law amid the hurry and tumult of preparation 



for battle. They tried to put hini out of the 

question, and he came back again in the mihtary 

necessity which produced the emancipation pro- 

chimation. They tried to put them out of 'the 

question, and they returned upon the secession 

hosts in phitoons and squadrons, with muskets in 

their hands, and the fire of battle in their eyes. 

They tried to kill them out of the question, by 

denying them even the tender mercies of war, 

and they came in the shape of demons, with 

glaring eyeballs and fixed bayonets, replying to 

every appeal of the prostrate chivalry, ''Remember 

Fort Pillow .'" Yes ! he is in the question, and he 

is going to be in the question long after this war 

shall have ceased. God has been teaching us by 

our bereavements and by the horrible sufferings 

of our brethren at the Libby and at Anderson- 

ville ; teaching the Union men of the South, by 

their pillaged and burned houses, their aged 

fathers murdered in cold blood, their outrao-ed 

wives and daughters; teaching all who have been 

passive or lukewarm on the subject, the true 

character of the spirit of slavery ; implanting in 

us the germs of a deeper sympathy with those on 

whose poor heads has fallen the whole weight of 

slavery's tyranny and lust and ignominy, and to 

whom bereavement has been as necessary a part 

of existence as labor. Xor does our work stop 



with sympathizing. We have a debt, a. fearful 
debt to the sons of oppression ; and the so called 
Christian Civilization which has compromised so 
long with the sin, must now rouse itself to atone 
for the suifering. Africa turns upon us with its 
broken shackles in its hands, and, shaking them 
in our faces, demands that we show her the way 
to enjoy liberty. Her children came to us against 
their will, and now, whether we will or no, God 
commits them to our care. The question cannot 
be evaded. Their thousands are among us, they 
will be among us when the war shall have ended, 
and something must be done with them. They 
must be taught to labor. They must be taught 
to govern themselves. They must be led up out 
of the foul chambers of ignorance and brutality 
to which slavery has thrust them down. They 
must be christianized. Slavery has stood beneath 
the very shadow of the cross, and called its bleed- 
inof Victim to witness that its atrocities were all 
for Clirist's sake, and, as a commentary upon its 
christian intentions, has compelled the slave to 
incorporate into his Christianity the toleration of 
the foulest lusts ; the denial of the marriage rite, 
the necessity of ignorance, the abrogation of all 
his rights as a father, or brother, or husband. 
Brutalized and degraded by such a Christianity, 
he stands before the nation to-day, a pupil to tax 



39 

tlie wisdom of the best skilled teacher ; and it is 
for us, disciplined into sympathy with his woes 
by our own, shamed into a new appreciation of 
his rights and of our duties through the religious 
sentiment awakened by our chastisement, and 
made by the necessities of the war the arbiters 
of his destiny, to lead him again to the cross, and 
there refute the foul lie uttered by tyrants be- 
neath its shadow, and read to him its lessons of 
love and protection and wisdom. For this God 
has spoken to the too lukewarm Christianity of 
the North. For this, among other objects, he 
has been sifting, and testing and purifying it by 
suffering. And already we hear the response. 
Already the hum of study mingles with the rustle 
of the palmetto leaves and the murmur of the 
sea. Already the daughters and sons of the 
North have begun their mission, and sit enthroned 
in rude school-rooms, where the child of tender 
years and the child of gray hairs, bend together 
over the same page, and learn from their lips the 
rudiments of christian education. This work, so 
small as yet, but so well begun— begun in such 
a spirit of christian love and christian sacrifice, 
is only another of those points at which religion 
has developed its relation to war, and is a finger 
marshalling the nation along the way it must go. 



40 

and pointing to its destiny as the educator and 
elevator of the race it has oppressed. 

And now, if God has revealed himself in this 
conflict as the Lord both of war and of righteous- 
ness, if he has brought out of the desolations of 
war a quickened moral perception, a grand exhi- 
bition of christian charity, a spirit of humiliation 
and prayer, an impulse to evangelical effort ; if, 
as we humbly believe, the nation is better fitted 
to-day than four years ago to be a representative 
of christian civilization, can we not see in all this 
indications of some new and larger results in the 
future ] The question suggests itself whether we 
are to need a constant application of such disci- 
pline as has visited us for the past four years to 
keep us in the path, or whether we will receive 
our directions now in an humble and teachable 
spirit, and walk the remainder of our journey 
under o^entler admonitions than war and desola- 
tion. Be assured, my brethren, the end for which 
God designs this nation, if we may presume to 
read his design in tlie obvious tendencies of his 
providence, is not our being the first military, or 
naval, or commercial power in the world ; not 
our furnishing the grandest displays of intel- 
lectual vigor and power. All these the nation 
may attain ; but they shall be, in the providence 
of God, but means to a higher, nobler end. her 



41 

power as a Christian (Jivilization. The "ban- 
ner of the cross" is destined to wave side hy side 
with the stars and stripes. Indications, I say, 
point to this. The facts of onr origin point to it. 
Our Pilgrim fathers sought not " the wealth of 
the seas, or the spoils of war," but the shrine of 
a pure faith. American civilization has been, 
from the first, a standing protest against religious 
despotism. Democracy, in many essential par- 
ticulars, and beyond any other form of govern- 
ment, is allied to Christianity. If democracy 
could ever be pervaded, thoroughly, down to 
every individual, with the spirit of Christianity, 
it would exhibit in human society that high ideal 
of Christianity, the perfection of lil)erty with the 
perfection of restraint. Democracy developes the 
individual by the power of responsibility ; and 
in this follows the example of Christianity. De- 
mocracy is a mighty leveler ; such is Christianity. 
Democracy is full of the spirit of enterprise, and 
affords the largest room for its expansion. Cliris- 
tianity is the inspirer of all healthy enterprise. 
Democracy, appealing to conviction instead of pre- 
judice, insists on the largest intelligence and culture. 
So does Christianity. Democracy accommodates 
itself to the m.ost varied forms of religious devel- 
opment, thereby exhibiting the same adaptation 
which marks Christianity. In numerous respects 



42 

democracy reveals itself as the natural ally and 
ag-ent of Christianity. To all this we mnst add 
the ftict, already adverted to, that God's purpose 
in the present state of affairs is a moral and not 
a political one. He has been teaching- us that 
we were guilty, not unfortunate ; that we were 
being punished, and not merely suffering from 
sore accident ; that ghastly national sins and not 
errors of administration are at the foundation of 
our troubles ; that we are to repent in sackcloth 
and ashes, and not merely remodel political plat- 
forms and appoint new leaders. God has been 
striking, and trying to make us strike at elements 
unfavorable to the growth of a pure democracy ; 
and these and other facts point to the conclusion 
that he is at work, preparing in this broad land 
a fit stage for the last act of the mighty drama, 
the consummation of human civilization. And 
for this the nation has had to undergo recasting. 
Base alloy had wrought itself into the fabric ; the 
lust of money and of power, national idolatry 
and vanity, sensuality, brutality, and oppression 
of men for whom Christ died. I look back into 
the years past, and I see our own avarice, our 
ow^n moral weakness, our complicity with sin, 
our overweening confidence and vanity and pride, 
heaping up fuel for the mighty fusion. I see 
secession, with the sneer of triumphant malice 



43 

on its lip, creep stealthily up from the marshes of 
Carolina, and apply the torch. And to-day the 
roar and o-low of the furnace are at their fiercest. 
To-dav its lurid oleam tinires the snows that 
Avatch the calm Pacific, and lights the bosom of 
the Father of waters, and the lagoons of Florida, 
and tips with fire the crests of the angry Atlantic. 
Already the molten mass has begun to flow; a 
fearful current, the blood of our sons, our bravest 
and our best, our national hopes and aspirations, 
our and^itions, our affections, our partisanships, our 
pride, our strength, our prosperity, our political 
theories, our national vanity, all pour fased to- 
gether, through millions of gleaming musket 
tubes, into the mould of our new life. I see not 
the shape of that mould. Its delicate lines are 
hid from mortal vision. But, while with you I 
shrink from the hot blast of the furnace, while 
with you I shrivel in its awful heat, through the 
tremulously air I see one standing where the ham- 
mers fall most quickly, where their dreadful beat 
is loudest, where the lurid glow is reddest, where 
the breath of the fire is hottest ; and His form is 
like unto the form of the Son of God, the Lord 
of war and of righteousness. So long as ui}^ e3^es 
discern him there my heart shall not fear. So 
long as I know that his potent rod is stretched 
out over the fierv stream, I will bid it flow on, 



44 

though it leave blig-lit nud desolation in its track. 
For I know that when, at His word, the rude 
mould shall fall away, there shall rise from it a 
thing of beauty ; a national life crowned as with 
the glory of noon-day ; girt round with prayer, 
robed in purity, with love in its eyes and peace 
upon its lips, and in its hand the open charters 
of freedom and religion. 

But, if we shall refuse to accept these indica- 
tions, — if, following the beck of our national trial 
we press not on to that higher plane of national 
life where stands the altar of Jehovah, if we 
move not forward to higher virtue, to perfect 
freedom, better, far better, that some mountain 
billow had engulfed the Mayflower. Better 
that England had strangled our infancy in her 
cruel gripe. Better that we be even now put to 
flight before the armies of rebellion, and hunted 
from the land so unworthily occupied, until 
another, sterner, better race be led from some far 
off isle to accomplish the work of which w^e shall 
have proved ourselves unworthy. 

" Freedoni dotli not consist 
In musing with our faces toward tlie past, 
While petty cares and crawling interests twist 
Their spider threads around us, which, at last, 
(irrow Strong as iron chains to cramp and Ijind 
In foi-mal narrowness, heart, soul and mind. 



45 

And, as the finder of nonic unknown realm. 
Mounting a summit whence he thinks to see, 
On either side of him the imprisoning sea. 
Beholds, above the clouds that overwhelm 
The valley land, peak after snowy peak 
Stretch out of sight, each like a silver helm 
Beneath its plume of smoke, sublime and bleak. 
And what he thought an island, finds to be 
A continent — to him first oped — so we 
Can, from our freight of Freedom, look along 
A boundless future, ours if we be strong ; 
Or, if \ve shrink, better remount our ships ; 
And, fleeing God's express design, trace back 
The hero-freighted Mayflower's prophet-track 
To Europe, entering her blood-red eclipse." 



ipfi 



